The IUCN Forest Pavilion at the 2016 World Conservation Congress was abuzz for four days with dialogues, videos, pleas for action and reverent reflections on forests.
Photo: IUCN
The four day open-forum portion of the IUCN World Conservation Congress in Honolulu, Hawaii, was a success. From early in the morning until late in the evening each day, the Forest Pavilion was host to over 30 sessions on forest topics ranging from forest landscape restoration, discussions on indigenous rights and managing risk in locally controlled forest businesses to global level dialogues on far-reaching forest initiatives.
The pavilion had the honour of hosting government ministers, royalty, other dignitaries, directors of NGOs, tribal representatives and many others. Each pavilion participant contributed valuable insight to the greater forests discussion as we position ourselves to collectively move forward with addressing global forest issues.
The actual structure of the pavilion, made almost entirely out of cardboard, was well equipped with displays, videos of personal testimonials, and both digital and hands-on interactive activities for the visitors. Perhaps the most popular display asked participants to pinpoint ‘their forest’ on a series of large world maps. By the end of the forum, the maps were covered in scores of multi-coloured pins and comments from forests that people care about all around the world.
The contributions of all of the participants are too numerous and too diverse to summarise in a short article, but you can explore the topics that were covered through the Forest Journey.
